Photographer's Note

Rotterdam by Night 5 – Vertical city

NightHunting with Rinie again. This time we started early to be able to shoot during the blue hour. Our first target was the Euromast.

This Wilhelminapier depicted here was shot from the 112 m high observation platform.
The view is dominated by the Montevideo highrise.
With a height of 153 m it’s the tallest residential building in the Netherlands. The building is designed by Mecanoo Architects (Francine Houben) and combines living, working and leisure. It was designed from 1999-2003 and constructed from 2003-2005 and is a hybrid construction - a combination of concrete and steel. The basement and the first storey are a combination of steel and concrete, from the second to the 27h storey the construction is composed of concrete, from the 28h storey to the top the building is constructed of steel. Because of its arrangement of apartments, offices, restaurants and other leisure facilities and the very diverse detailing it can be seen as a expression of the ‘vertical city’ concept.

On the left of Montevideo is the World Port Centre (WPC) designed by sir Norman Foster, a very unremarkable building by his standards. It's the HQ of the Port Authority and other municipal services.

Sandwiched between the two high rises is good old Hotel New York, the former headoffice of the HAL (Holland-America Line).
The two low buildings on the pier on the left once also belonged to the HAL. The low slung one with the four arches is the Cruise Terminal and behind it is the modernist Las Palmas building, the former HAL technical workshop facility building, currently being converted into a cultural centre.

The little building on the edge of the pier on the right is the home base of the water taxi.

Moored near the WPC is the Rotterdam based ocean going "driemast schoener" De Eendracht.

PCS2 tech: slightly cropped, altered the contrast, saturation, curves and levels for the whole pic and some elements separately, USM-ed and added a frame. Because of all the intricate detail to be compressed in only 200 kB, I didn't use the save for the web function here.

Brother-in-arms!! ;-))
This is a beautiful 'blue hour scene indeed with great clarity. You can JUST see the Brienenoord bridge, and that big, big hall of the shipyard behind it. Yua have really taken advantage of the hour here. Too bad the the sky was not as great as seen above the other side of the city.
Next time the railway station??

Present and future, I cant stop to look at the boat beside the skycrapers, together with the small building (if I remember well, it belonged to a colonial company) talk me about exotic travels. Nice light Bert, excelent composition for dream. Take care.

A very neat and clean view, Bert, and after being there and seeing some of Rotterdam myself, it's even nicer to appreciate this and recognize the HNY etc. Good timing for your shooting with Rinie to benefit from the blue-hour mood, and nice graphical aspect provided by the modern architecture and the multitude of scattered light sources. Considering the amount of detail and the related JPG compression, you managed a good quality for this upload.

Hi Bert,
This is an excellent shot!And what a great handle of light.The blue hour indeed gives amazing night colors.You made a perfect composition with a great depth to these impresive buildings.A high quality image!
Greetings,
Thomas

Hi bert, You dotn realize just how high the Montivedeo is, Hotel New York is dwarfed.
The blue hour and your exposure time has provided you with such good lighting and so fine details.
See you tomorrow:)

Hi Bert,
A superb night shot of the city, where you took advantage of the blue hour. I like the clarity of detail, the exposure level, and the clean tight imagery. The sailing vessel in the foreground enhances the scene. Very well captured.
John

Rotterdam seems to have a lot of places with stunning POV's like these. Otherwise - and I tend to believe this - you "make" the POV's "happen" ingeniously. The DOF's you get with your equipment and your POV are simply wonderful, Bert, a real model for all of us in TE.

Hi Bert. An excellent capture of this highrise corner. I am surprised everytime I see older cities in Europe sporting highrises. The ones here create a nice contrast with the low rise buildings around. A good time of the day to capture the lights and colors on this scene. Nice work :-)

Amazing panoramic to Rotterdam. I like very much the clear shot and great manage to expossure. I am preparing my trip to Holland, Belgium and Luxemburg in May and think to visit Rotterdam.
Thanks for share
Sergio